August 16, 2011, Evening. Less than an hour ago
Hal and Sunny were at an out-of-the-way table in a solitary cafe on the Boston waterfront, and it was good luck to locate a place like that during summer.
He, with his brown shaggy hair and in a white shirt and jacket and black slacks, had his attention on the myriad of little windows populating his laptop screen, each of them dealing with his communication with David and Dragon, or the hijacked security around themselves. In front of him, Sunny worked out some math problems on her own laptop, wearing a slightly oversized sweater that only left visible some colorful stockings and an old pair of boots from David.
It grated on him that Sunny was the more vulnerable of the two, yet he was the one who had to avoid being recognized. David had instilled in him the "do's and don'ts" of trying to hide in plain sight, and Hal had practiced them quite extensively over the past six years, but he was thankful that most of the people walking the waterfront tonight had chosen the tables closer to the beach or gone to other restaurants, leaving them relatively alone. He suspected the recent Endbringer attack had discouraged people from going out, despite the low casualties and material destruction.
David wouldn't approach the subject, but Hal was sure he was also worried about the fourth Endbringer. From the few descriptions of Sahelanthropus' initial crouching position that were published, it sounded far too similar to Rex for comfort; not the crippled and cheap knock offs that started showing up after Shadow Moses, but the original. It felt like someone somewhere was playing a sick joke on them.
Among other things on his laptop, he had a small window showing him the weather. It seemed that his prediction of the local weather was a bit off, and Brockton Bay would be sharing their rain with a vengeance in a couple of hours. Enough time to finish their business here and then get under a roof, he hoped, but thankfully, they were in the south side of the city, where urban life still went on without a care.
Despite the low number of casualties, Sahelanthropus left the northernmost side absolutely ravaged before leaving the city unseen. While the bacterial mist covered the entire zone and controlled anyone who dared step into it, forcing everyone to fight among themselves, the two-legged monster devastated entire neighborhoods unseen and unopposed with its weapons and the stone pillars it summoned from the ground, tumbling one building over another or breaking water pipes under the streets. Like a kid stepping into a row of unattended sand castles, leaving a signature on them so everyone knew who had done it and how little it cared.
Most of the place had been already evacuated, but the feeling was the same everywhere: everything it did was mean to be an insult towards the defenders.
He came back from his musings when a sound caught his attention. An email from Dragon confirmed the installation of the CODEC client on her end. Hal quickly answered with the emergency frequencies for himself and David. Dragon's break-in into their CODEC chat was mostly because of her systems on her ship flying above Brockton Bay detecting the radio signals, and while Mei Ling's work held against the "world's greatest tinker", Dragon managed to jury rig a close approximation of the CODEC system on the fly. From her reputation as a parahuman Tinker, he wouldn't have expected any less.
It was obvious that David was using Dragon's worry about Hebert to lower the chances that the tinker would pursue him, and maybe even cooperate with the investigation. Someone else might have thought he was just being opportunistic, but Hal knew that despite his rude and gruff mannerisms and the impressions that his body count could give, David did care for people. He was the one who named the group they founded Philanthropy, after all.
He hoped Dragon would respect the improvised truce, but that was for David to worry about later.
He took a sip from his iced tea while he watched his laptop screen and listened over his cochlear. "Killed far too many to be comfortable being called a 'hero', even if some people disagree."
Hal cleared his throat into the microphone as David finished answering to Virtue. No, Taylor Hebert. Considering the two assassination attempts, there wasn't much point in hiding her civilian ID anymore.
He was checking a window on his screen that showed tapped feeds from several nearby security cameras when he heard David talking again. "Like my friend listening in on us on the radio. Holds me in far too high esteem."
Hal sighed. "Yeah, I must have imagined you saving me from Gray Fox, enduring torture for the sake of Meryl, and all around saving the world from several political catastrophes. You need to stop selling yourself short, Snake."
He looked down the street, and his heart skipped a beat when he saw a familiar face two blocks away walking in their direction. "Anyway, EE is here, call me when you're out." He closed the call and sent another message to Dragon to indicate he would still be available, but preoccupied.
A humming noise from Sunny got his attention and made him turn to look at her, face covered in the big hood. "Yeah, Sunny?"
She pursed her lips from behind her laptop, fidgeting with her sleeves. "Y-you", she stammered, "you are sh-shaking. Why?"
Hal nodded and looked down the table, taking a breath before looking at Sunny again. "Right. Sorry, it's my sister. We didn't leave on the friendliest terms."
She didn't seem to get it – understandable, since her sheltered life didn't allow for much socialization – but she nodded in acceptance of the answer.
Emma, as he suspected that she'd resent him using her old moniker, reached the café, dressed in a short shirt and sports pants, sneakers, and a messenger bag hanging from her shoulder, all of it in matching black and pink. Seeing her with her shortish brown hair collected with chopsticks at the back of her head was curious enough, but the part that intrigued Hal were the glasses. Emma always had perfectly healthy eyes, why was she wearing glasses now?
Seeing him, she took her sweet time walking to them. When she reached the table and stood there, Hal rose as well. "Emma", he greeted her with a smile.
"Hal". Her face was perfectly neutral, but her voice was positively venomous.
Hal squared his jaw and gestured at the chair closest to her, resisting the urges to hug her. "Please, sit." All things considered, that wasn't a bad start to their meeting.
August 16, 2011, Evening. Now
In the safety of his underground base, Coil leaned back on his office chair and sighed. This day couldn't have gone worse.
This was a disaster. And it stung even more because he was to blame.
It had started with the construction company he owned as Thomas Calvert winning the bid to work on the Boston's northern zone. While not completely in ruins like most cities after an Endringer had attacked them, it was in a barely habitable state after Sahelanthropus' visit. So the mayor had organized a party during the weekend, in anticipation to the reconstructions and the benefits that it would bring to the city.
At the same time, Virtue's presence in the infirmary wing in the Brockton Bay PRT HQ posed an issue. The loose end needed to be eliminated before the dying girl had the chance to recover enough energy to give any clues on his involvement with the current gang war, and the challenge was doing it in one of the safest buildings in Brockton Bay. It was unlikely she could give anything away, as the reports on her health gave her barely days to live and she wasn't in any condition to communicate anyway. But she might have seen things compromising his operations in Brockton Bay, like his men among the E88 group that burned down her house, or maybe in any of the jobs she performed against the Empire or the ABB.
He didn't want to miss an event that could boost the prospects of his business, but at the same time dealing with Virtue was a priority for his operational security. Given that Coil was on a tight timeline to deal with both events, and he was unsure of the success of any of them, he hedged his bets.
In one timeline, he accepted the invitation to the party; in the other he excused himself, staying at one of his underground bases and working on the potential attack.
He had plans quickly drafted, scrapped and redrawn, and had his moles in the building prepare to seize control of security. He asked his pet the proper questions until he had a plan with a greater than 75% chance of success.
Coil was aware of Dragon's presence in the city, so he'd wait for her to leave, and supplied his men with anti-air weapons just in case. Using the public role of the E88 in the fire, his Empire moles inciting a ruckus might work as an acceptable distraction. Whether she'd take the bait or leave for any other reason, he'd give the go ahead when she was too far to respond to the situation before his men retreated.
The party in Boston had started as expected, though not less boring for that. Once all the guests were in the room, the mayor had started monologuing about the endurance and strength of will of the Bostonians, and made Calvert go up the stage to receive his thanks.
The Wards possibly ignoring proper security protocols and moving into an unknown situation was also accounted for. Coil didn't expect them to escape the lockdown, not without good reason at least, but he was confident his men would pin them down for long enough to complete their objective.
Being the one responsible for the reconstruction of half the city had earned him with a degree of good will with the local personalities, but mingling with the guests wasn't giving him anything practical that his alliance with Accord wouldn't provide on its own. Still, the party was quite pleasurable, so there wouldn't be any harm on continuing the timeline.
He was also tempted to act against that upstart Iriomote, who had usurped him in the queue for promotion to ENE's PRT director, purely as stress relief, but he felt that would have been pushing his luck. He doubted his men would have enough time to take care of two objectives.
The plan that he ultimately decided to use was overkill and louder than he liked, but the party hadn't resulted in any benefits yet. If anything, he decided, the assassination could serve a test to see how his forces would perform if he was forced to attack the PRT openly. If he really needed the Hebert girl dead, one of his moles sabotaging her life support systems would have sufficed. He could have that done after this test was done, in fact.
By the time he had sent his men to wait in position nearby the PRT building in preparation, the party was finally ending. It had been an enjoyable affair, but sadly any few favors he managed to grab didn't quite offset the risk of Virtue's knowledge. In retrospect, keeping that timeline open as long as he had was purely self-indulgence, but eventually he deemed it safe to close that timeline and focus on the operation.
With his men in position, he split the timeline once again. One would be the safe timeline he was planning to keep, holding his men back from action.
In the other timeline, that he would use as his testing ground, his moles started taking control of security to lock as many PRT workers and troopers as they could in rooms, facilitate access for the attackers, and erase any proof of their presence. They had already modified patrol routes and timetables to keep troops as far as possible from the building at that particular moment. Next, his men outside would assault the place, with the goal of searching for and eliminating Virtue.
Just because he was testing things in a disposable timeline didn't mean he would be reckless.
It was fortunate he wasn't.
Two other parties had unexpectedly shown up. The reports he received hadn't given him many details, other than some sort of murderous swordsman in tinker armor dismembering his soldiers and a scarily competent soldier shooting them down with tranquilizer darts, escorting a miraculously healed Hebert. Worse, Dragon had been warned sooner than planned and had provided an escape for the girl and her minder. Finally, Wards and on-site troopers had been wounded or killed, with the Protectorate and trooper patrols approaching fast following the police. There were rumors that Iriomote had disappeared as well.
Everything pointed at him as the sole perpetrator.
The only thing he could do was to order a quick recovery of the few fallen men in the upper floors and a swift retreat via helicopter, sending them into hiding as fast as possible, and hope nothing would come up from the chunks at the lobby, because his safe timeline was even worse.
Dragon had come back just as fast without the intervention of his soldiers in the other timeline. He had pulled his men back when it happened, but it seemed that she had spotted them as they left.
Half an hour after everything had settled down, Virtue had been found with a bleeding neck, and Dragon was pounding at the reinforced doors of all three of his bases in Brockton Bay with suits rated for Endbringers, backed by Protectorate capes, both local and from out of state. There was no trace of Hebert's guardian.
He couldn't be sure, but he suspected what had happened without his intervention: the swordsman had killed Virtue, Dragon noticed his men, and being the only group in the city that employed military mercenaries, he would be one of the prime leads for any investigation. What he hadn't expected was Dragon's zeal; she and Virtue must have been fairly close.
Coil closed the safe timeline. To say that it was a lost cause was an understatement. He couldn't even have the consolation of the party timeline and its slight benefits.
So there he sat, with a potential leak on the loose, his assault force not quite crippled, but taking a considerable hit and in hiding, and considering his options in case the corpses were linked to him.
Suddenly, his phone rang. Taking it from the desk, he accepted the call and raised the phone to his ear.
"Coil."
"Mr. Calvert", an emotionless voice answered. "I think there has been a miscommunication between us."
Coil's day was getting worse
Saint narrowed his eyes at the monitors. "I don't like it."
Mags grinned as she shrugged at Dobrynja. "Told you."
"That tin-plated moron", Saint fumed, "just gave the thing a loophole to ignore its restriction. Start preparing a hard reset, and get Ascalon ready just in case."
Dobrynja raised a hand. "It's true it looks bad, but we should limit ourselves to observation for now. Dragon hasn't really broken free from any of its restrictions, not really, and it's complying with an order to keep that girl safe. I can't find any fault with that."
Saint turned to glare at him. "Maybe. But what about 'Solid Snake'? He's a wanted man, and she's not doing anything about it."
Dobrynja nodded. "I already thought of that. I called an old comrade serving in the Krasnaya Perchatka to see if anyone in Russia knew anything. I didn't get the specifics, but turns out they have some sort of business with him."
Saint narrowed his eyes, tapping a finger on the desk. "Meaning?"
"Theoretically, yes, we could use Ascalon to kill Dragon, let the ship crash, and get Snake killed in the process as collateral. But now that they know I asked about him, the Perchatka would suspect us if anything happened to him or his group, and Rukavitsa herself would 'track us down and bring their Spetsnaz to hold us still while she guts us like pigs'." Dobrynja shrugged. "Paraphrasing a bit."
Leaning back on his chair, Saint passed a hand over his cropped hair. "I'm not going to piss off the biggest political and military independent group in Russia just because I don't like how Dragon's skirting the lines. I don't like it, but alright." A pause, and then he lifted the hand to point at the monitors. "That said, I want constant monitoring, the grunts on alert, and the suits ready to go. Tell our men close to the zone to gear up and prepare their anti-armor weapons. Portland, Boston, Albany, Montreal, any city around Brockton Bay that they may fly over. Get our people in Boston to shadow Emmerich, he's involved in this somehow. And tell everyone else to be ready to move. The very moment that thing actually crosses the line, we shut it down and salvage the ship. And if those two can keep it flying, shoot it down."
As he rose up from the chair, Saint looked up to one of the screens. "Look at that kid, buying that thing's acting. Makes me sick."
Two floors above the monitoring room, one hand applied a sticky cloth to the glass. Another ran a small blade in a circle around the cloth, cutting a round piece. Leaving the piece of glass and the blade aside in the roof, one hand entered through the new hole, and started operating the latch. It took a bit of effort, but the window was opened soon enough.
A rope was thrown carefully through the window, and a man started climbing down quickly and silently. When he touched the floor, another followed him with the same skill.
The first, dressed in dark fatigues, a red beret and night vision goggles, had a broad white beard and carried a silenced AKS-74U; the other, in a baggy brown jumpsuit and more heavily geared with a helmet, balaclava, protection goggles and bulletproof vest, carried an extensively modified UN-ARC. Their right shoulders had faded emblems with the names of Spetsnaz and XOF, respectively, but both of them shared an armband in the left with the symbol of a dog face in a diamond outline. A small diamond glittered under each of the dog faces.
The man in the beret put a finger on his ear and whispered with a slight Russian lisp, "Silent Mastodon here with Frantic Squirrel. We're in the attic, everything clear. Over."
Their earpieces crackled. "Buffalo here with Gray Chameleon at the east side. Still waiting for Running Mongoose and Biting Tree Frog to get to their position. Over."
A second voice came in. "Sorry, old Mongoose can't carry a battle dress on his own anymore without me there to drag him around. Be there in five, over."
Mastodon chuckled. "Roger that. Will proceed with observation. Over."
With the radio silent, Squirrel huffed behind Mastodon. "Still can't believe we're back in action", he muttered with an Australian accent. "And even despite Mongoose's fat ass, making good time, for a bunch of old timers. Figures."
"Now, now, there's only one old timer, as Commander Miller would say", Mastodon said with a smile, "and he's still keeping that honor."
Squirrel chuckled. "Almost like the old times, huh?"
Crouched, Mastodon took cover behind one side of a door, weapons ready, and waited while Squirrel prepared a bundle of cables and drilling tools.